A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler1993 Pulitzer Prize Winner

Details

The unspoken legacy of the Vietnam War -- the ordeals of the Vietnamese - is powerfully evoked in these fifteen stories, each narrated in a different voice. Old or young, humble or arrogant, puzzled or proud, these are characters for whom the absurdities of contemporary American popular culture and searing memories of war uneasily coexist.

Blending Vietnamese folklore and American realities, lyric, dreamlike passages and comic turns, Butler creates a panoramic tapestry of a people struggling to find a balance between tradition and assimilation, between their hearts and their hopes.